Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog. Music and writing in London, UK.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Pogorelich

Here's the review from the New York Times of Pogorelich playing at the Metropolitan Museum a couple of weeks ago, which I finally got round to reading.

It's very upsetting. The photo is distressing enough - Kojak? - but I can well believe that Mr Tommasini is telling it how it was, since at the last concert I heard Pogorelich give in London, his playing fitted this description with appalling precision. It was a Rachmaninov piano concerto several years ago; I think it was supposed to be No.2, but what emerged was so distorted as to be almost unrecognisable. Yet a recital of his that I heard at London's Royal Festival Hall, probably the better part of 10 years back, was astonishing: so full of colour, nuance and brilliance that it was like watching a Kandinsky in a kaleidoscope.

I interviewed him in 1993, when I was the editor of Classical Piano magazine, as well as encountering him socially a couple of times. For the interview, I was asked to visit him at home in Surrey, where his spacious modern mansion included an exquisite wood-lined music room. He was charming, intelligent and well-informed, and as handsome as his photos (he was every piano student's pin-up). His motto was, more or less, 'no compromise': artistry had to be all or nothing. If I can find the article I'll post it in my permasite archive.

What has gone wrong? His wife, who was his former teacher from Moscow and to whom he seemed utterly devoted, died of cancer some time ago. It looks, from the outside, as if he has never quite found his feet again. Rumours circulated that he was ill and that he had given up performing; and the return journey does not appear promising. Perhaps it would be best if he did indeed bow out gracefully while and if he still can, leaving us with the memories of his artistry at its finest, untainted by this tragedy.

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